Can You Write a Novel In a Month?

If you search the Internet for writing guides (and I do that a lot – checking out the competition!) you frequently come across some course or program claiming to show you how to write novel-length fiction in as little as 30 days.

If you write 3,000 words per day, the argument goes, you’ll have a 90,000-word novel sitting on your desk by the end of the month. Which is total garbage, of course.

Trouble is, a lot of new writers believe that it is technically feasible to write a novel in such a short time. After all…

Actually, no. “NaNoWriMo” is about writing a first draft in 30 days. Indeed, the organizers themselves are quick to point out that it takes a lot longer than a month to write a complete novel…

What about the time you spend coming up with an idea in the first place?

What about planning and researching the book?

Even when you start the actual writing, what about revising each day’s 3,000 word quota? (And trust me, unless you’re a genius you’ll need to do plenty of revision and editing.)

What about those days when you’re just not firing on all cylinders and you end up tidying the stationery drawer? (Hey, we all have days like that.)

And on the basis that there is more to life than work, what about taking time off?!

Also (if your inclination is to hurry) think about why you would want to write a novel so fast…

If it’s because you need the money, fair enough. But there are smarter ways to raise cash in such a small amount of time. And besides, the more you hurry your writing, the less likely it is that the novel will be publishable.

If it’s simply to “get the job done” so you can cross it off the list and move on to the next thing, you’ve really got to question whether creative writing is for you at all.

If it’s because you relish the challenge of creating something as monumental as a novel (or at least a first draft) in such a short space of time, that’s understandable…

Personally, I think that writing a novel is challenging enough without burdening yourself with an incredibly tight deadline. More than that, I don’t see why you would want to rush something so enjoyable and rewarding…

You wouldn’t want to cram your vacation into a single day, or try to eat a wonderful meal in five minutes flat. Why try to write a novel in a month?

That said, I totally get that, for some folks, the only way to get anything done at all is to slap a deadline on it. But I don’t get why you’d want to make it as tight as 30 days.

I’m sure that it’s possible to write a novel in three months, maybe less if you know what you’re doing and you really push yourself (and don’t have the inconvenience of a living to earn). 12 months, though, is a more realistic minimum, and maybe a few years if you’re just starting out and haven’t yet learned your craft.

You don’t become a doctor or a lawyer in a few months. You don’t become an expert in anything in such a short space of time. Why would it be any different with writing fiction?

Next question…

How Long Do Professional Novelists Take?

The answer is anywhere from a few weeks (the late romantic novelist Barbara Cartland comes to mind) to the best part of a decade (I can’t remember who off the top of my head, but I read an interview with a famous writer who had taken that long).

If a professional writer brings out a new book every year, they are said to be prolific. A new novel every two to three years is about the average, with a four- or five-year gap not uncommon.

So where does that leave you?

Well, the thing to remember is that professional novelists, at least the famous and successful ones, have the luxury of being able to write full-time.

(Yes, I know they do other stuff besides writing, like going on book tours and writing newspaper columns, but they still don’t have a day job to go to.)

Also, they are good at what they do and have years of experience behind them. And the more we do something, the quicker and more efficiently we can do it.

If you are writing a novel for the first time and you do have a job, you have neither experience on your side nor plenty of hours in the day – meaning that the two to three years I recommended as a comfortable target might be tougher to meet.

Bottom Line On How Long It Takes?

Only you know your circumstances and the particular novel you have in mind, and only you know if you are prolific or one of life’s tortoises. So only you can make a guess at how long writing fiction to a publishable standard might take.

I’m just trying to warn you against setting unrealistic targets – or setting targets at all, actually.

My best advice is to…

take your time

enjoy the journey

not reckon on reaching your destination anytime soon.

Write as often as you can, and be as productive as you can during your work sessions. But don’t put added pressure on yourself with a ticking clock. It will only make you rush. And rushing is unlikely to make your novel any better.

Above all, don’t forget to enjoy yourself. Your livelihood doesn’t depend on you finishing your novel to a deadline (at least, it shouldn’t – making money from your writing is a fine goal to have, but not if it’s your one and only motivation).

In fact, the healthiest way for newcomers to view novel writing is like a hobby with great prospects. And what is the point of a hobby if it’s a drag?

Finding Time to Write

Wondering how long it takes to write a novel is a useful question. But there are two questions that will help you reach the end much faster…

How do I find the time to do some writing today (and the day after that and the day after that)?

How do I make the most of every single hour?

Get the answers to those right and the bigger question takes care of itself.

Now, I’m not a time-management guru, and I lack just as much self-discipline as the next man or woman. But for what they’re worth, here are a few snippets of advice that have helped me carve out those precious chunks of time…

1. The Value of Small Slots

“I had no time to write – zero time. But I figured I could make time if I carved out little segments. I knew it would be a slow process, but I didn’t care because I was in no hurry.”
– John Grisham

I’ve always believed that we can find the time to do anything if we want to do it badly enough, no matter how busy our schedules. Indeed, if we don’t do something then it probably wasn’t as high a priority as we thought.

For me – and hopefully for you, too – the time to write is definitely one of my priorities. Despite having to earn a living (and run this website!), I always manage to set aside 30 minutes a day for writing.

Well, most days!

And I recommend that you aim for something similar. Whether you have half an hour to spare, like me, or several hours (lucky you!), carve those creative work sessions into your schedule like the unmissable appointments they are.

And understand this…

It’s much better to write in short, regular stints than long and irregular ones. So if you have only three or four hours a week to work on your novel, try to do it every single day for 30 minutes, rather than doing the whole lot on Sunday. Here’s why…

If you write daily, even for a very short period, it keeps whatever you are working on fresh in your mind.

Write weekly and you will spend half the time trying to get back to the place you left off last week.

(Yes, becoming a writer is just like getting fit: the first day of jogging is torture, but it doesn’t take long to get into shape. But if you run (or write) just once a week, your “shape” will have all but disappeared in seven days.)

And get this…

Small doses of hard work are a lot more manageable than long ones. Writing with intensity for 60 minutes isn’t so tough. Try to do it for four hours straight, though, and you might come down with a bad case of writer’s block.

2. Creating New Time to Write

“My own schedule is pretty clear-cut. Mornings belong to whatever is new – the current composition. Afternoons are for naps and letters. Evenings are for reading, family, Red Sox games on TV, and any revisions that just cannot wait. Basically, mornings are my prime writing time.”
– Stephen King

If you don’t have a full-time job (or other commitments), you will have the luxury of being able to choose your own writing hours. If you do have to work then you must somehow magic time out of thin air. But how?

By switching off the garbage we all sometimes watch on TV? Perhaps. But the reason we watch that garbage in the first place is that we’re too tired at the end of a long day to do anything else.

By writing on the train instead of reading? Hardly. Who can concentrate on a train when there are people (or potential novel characters!) to secretly watch?

Creating time by cutting back on other pursuits is fine in theory, but in practice it’s tough to make it stick. And so the best bet, for most people, is to write when you would otherwise be in bed…

If you’re a night owl, go to bed a little later. Learn to treasure those 30 or 60 minutes at the end of the day when the house is quiet and you can wind down by escaping into your imagination.

Personally – and this is true for most writers I speak to – I find that early mornings are best. The agony of getting out of bed an hour earlier is over by the time the coffee has brewed. And most people’s minds are much sharper then than late at night.

But whatever works for you is what is best.

3. Stick to Your Writing Time Come What May

You may have dreamt of becoming a novelist for years. But dreams don’t come true all by themselves. Sooner or later you need to get real, and that means putting in the hours whether you feel like it or not.

Hopefully, you will feel like working. Hopefully, you’ll be so juiced up about your novel that you’ll beat the alarm clock out of bed every morning!

Meanwhile in the real world, though, there will still be days when the prospect of writing fiction doesn’t exactly make you start whistling Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah.

You’ve still got to do it, though.

If you planned to work on your novel for an hour before breakfast or 30 minutes after dinner, that is what you must do.

Full-blown emergencies give you a free pass. Everything else can wait. That is the discipline you need to become a novel writer. And you need it day after day (except on scheduled days off!)

If it’s any consolation, the buzz and sense of achievement that you get from having worked creatively for an hour always far exceeds the energy you had to put into it.

Making the Most of Your Time

Okay. Having decided that writing a novel will be more of a marathon than a sprint, and that the way you will reach the finish line is by getting up at six o’clock every morning instead of seven (or whatever), there are two more things you must do…

1. Work Smart

You’ve heard the line about a journey of a thousand miles beginning with a single step.

It’s not bad advice. In the case of novel writers, the journey is the planning and writing of a long work of fiction. And for that you need a map.

Study the map closely before you set out, and keep referring to it along the way. It truly tells you everything you need to know to write fiction to a professional standard.

The single steps you take along the way – thousands and thousands of them – are like the individual work sessions you will spend at your writing desk.

The most important thing? Focus…

If you sit down to write and concentrate on one specific task – fleshing out a character, figuring out a plot twist, drafting a chapter – that will be one more step in the fiction writing journey behind you.

If you try to do a hundred things at once, you’ll get overwhelmed and won’t achieve anything.

That is what I mean by working smart.

Sure, you sometimes need to spend a writing session looking at the “big picture” – how far you have come, what tasks you need to do next. That is like stopping to study the map.

For the most part, though, ignore the overall journey and concentrate on achieving just one small task today. It’s amazing how they stack up over time.

And incidentally, it’s much better if the task you set yourself each day is easily manageable within the working session…

If you plan to write one page, for example, but end up writing two – because you really got into the swing of it – you’ll end up feeling great.

If you plan to write three pages, you’ll feel bad if you only manage two. (And because three pages is a lot more daunting, you may play hooky and not show up to work at all!)

2. When You Sit Down to Write, Write!

“I am not at all in a humour for writing; I must write on till I am.”
– Jane Austen

We do these things while waiting for inspiration to strike. But trust me, it never does – not on its own.

Like I said, you’ve got to sit down to work whether you feel like it or not. So if your small task for the day is to draft a particular scene, just start writing it.

This usually means forcing the words out at first. But you should soon find that your inspiration starts to flow.

Of course, you don’t always have to be turning sheets of blank paper into pages of beautiful prose when you are at your desk. You might spend your writing time…

creating a character profile

typing up yesterday’s handwritten draft

doing some research.

Just make sure that you always work on some aspect of your novel for the full time you have allocated.

Writing a Novel In Ten Minutes a Day

Finally in this article, the solution to a problem that’s been bugging me for years. Let me rewind a bit…

I’m a big believer in planning (or outlining) fiction. Why? The reason that most first novels end up at the back of drawers, never to be finished, is that the writer hit a dead end. They started out in a great burst of creative enthusiasm but then, a couple of chapters in, they had no idea how to keep moving forward.

Proper planning would have prevented this. But the problem is that the planning process can takes weeks or months, and it can get tedious to spend all that time working out your story in theory but not doing any actual writing.

The solution, of course, is to do both. Spend part of your working day planning and the remainder writing…

In the beginning, spend the bulk of your time planning. But set aside at least ten minutes a day for writing.

By the end, the ratio will have switched: most of your time will be spent writing with just a little time spent ironing out any kinks in the plan.

A Closer Look At Pantsters and Planners

They say there are two sorts of writers…

Pantsters like to write by the “seat of their pants” – making up the story as they go with no plan to follow. This can work, but the big danger is a lot of wasted time and effort if things go off course (which they are more likely to do the less you know your craft).

Planners (and I’m one of them) have the opposite problem – getting so engrossed in the minutiae of the plan that it becomes a never-ending task.

If you’re a natural pantster, the challenge for you will be to put the necessary work into your novel’s outline. There’s no point in telling you to write for at least ten minutes every day, because you probably couldn’t stop yourself if you tried!

If you’re a planner by nature, force yourself to put that outline aside and write for ten minutes a day, even if you’re perfectly happy spending the next six months of your life doing nothing but planning the twists and turns of your novel.

Why is that important? Two reasons…

First, it ensures that you make reasonable progress from the outset. Yes, planning is important (unless you really know what you’re doing), but all those planning notes don’t contribute anything to the final word count of the novel.

Second, when the planning is eventually done, it means you can slip into “writing” mode with your writing muscles in reasonable shape. If you haven’t written a paragraph of prose or a line of dialogue in six months, you’ll be all rusted up.

The key here is discipline. Whether you prefer planning or writing, you still need to do the activity that you don’t prefer. And you need to do it every day.

What’s the best way to ensure that you don’t neglect your least-favored task?

Make It Ridiculously Easy to Succeed

The hardest thing about writing – or doing any demanding job, for that matter – is getting started.

Once you get going, the job is rarely as tough as you thought. But that doesn’t stop your brain looking for any excuse it can find to put the job off in the first place.

John Steinbeck put it well…

How the mind rebels against work, but once working, it rebels just as harshly against stopping. I don’t know why this should be. It’s a dumb brute, the human mind.

If planning a novel really isn’t your thing, but you can nevertheless see the sense in doing it, do it anyway – but only in ten minute bursts.

The same thing applies to writing…

If a blank sheet of paper fills you with dread (and you’re not alone if it does), write on that sheet of paper anyway – but only in ten minute bursts.

Ten minutes every single day is do-able, even if the task is a difficult one. An hour is a lot tougher – so much so that you’re far less likely to even make a start.

The neat thing is that, once you’ve got started, you may not want to stop. If that’s the case, fine – keep going for an hour or two if you like. But never tell yourself in advance that you “need” to sit down to write for two hours.

Here’s the unbreakable rule…

Every day for ten minutes you will sit down to write (or plan if that is the task you hate doing). If you exceed ten minutes, great. But you don’t need to. Once you’ve clocked up your ten minutes, that’s it – you’re free to stop.

Of course, writing will be difficult if you don’t yet have any idea what your novel will be about. But that’s no excuse…

The “ten-minute challenge” needs to start today (or tomorrow if it’s late), and it needs to continue every single day, forever.

If your goal is to write every single day for two hours, you’ll never stick to it. But “ten minutes” is such a low bar to clear that it’s ridiculously easy to succeed.

Don’t worry about the quality of the writing – first drafts are supposed to be clunky! Just write, even if the words suck.

If you can’t get going, start your pen moving by deliberately writing as badly as you possibly can.

And don’t worry if you don’t know what your novel is about yet. You will do soon enough – and then you’ll be able to write about characters from your story.

In the meantime, write anything. So long as it resembles prose and dialogue in a novel, it’s fine – even if it’s the worst prose and dialogue that has ever been written. (You’ll probably never use it, anyway, so who cares?)

It sounds obvious to say it, but writers write. The sooner you can get into the habit of writing, and keep the habit going, the better.

Professional writers plan, too. So if planning is your weakness, start getting into the habit today – but only for ten-minutes at a time.

Wrapping Up…

Bottom line? The mammoth task of writing a novel ultimately boils down to establishing a routine that works for you, and then sticking to your writing time whether you feel like it or not.

With practice, both laziness and hard work can become habits. But only hard work can be fun.